Friday, March 4, 2016

Boko Haram Falls Victim to a Food Crisis It Created

"Ti ounje ba ti ku ro ni inu ise, ise bu se." - Yoruba adage (literally translated as "when you divorce hunger from lack,you reduced poverty")

When I read the above caption news story on the New York Times website, I went through several emotions, at first I was nonplussed and then I was elated which quickly turned into a sad sobbing state. The truth of the matter is that the entire story will ordinarily sound comical until you think of the human cost of the dastardly acts of Boko Haram and the harm done by these callous fundamentalist.

Without much ado, below is the story culled from New York Times 3/6/2016:

MORA, Cameroon — At first, the attack had all the hallmarks of a typical Boko Haram assault. Armed fighters stormed a town on the border with Nigeria, shooting every man they saw. But this time, instead of burning homes and abductinghostages, the fighters gathered cows, goats and any kind of food they could round up, then fled with it all. Boko Haram the Islamist extremist group terrorizing this part of the world, is on the hunt — for food.
After rampaging across the region for years, forcing more than two million people to flee their homes and farms, Boko Haram appears to be falling victim to a major food crisis of its own creation. Farmers have fled, leaving behind fallow fields. Herdsmen have rerouted cattle drives to avoid the violence. Throughout the region, entire villages have emptied, leaving a string of ghost towns with few people for Boko Haram to dominate — and little for the group to plunder. 
“They need food. They need to eat,” Midjiyawa Bakari, the governor of the Far North region of Cameroon, said of Boko Haram. “They’re stealing everything.”
Across parts of northeastern Nigeria and border regions like the Far North, trade has come to a halt and tens of thousands of people are on the brink of famine, United Nations officials say. Markets have shut down because vendors have nothing to sell, and even if they did, many buyers have been scared off by the suicide bombers Boko Haram sends into crowds."
To read more go to http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/05/world/africa/boko-haram-food-crisis.html